Catastrophic cuts in the District’s “safety net” for our
children, poor, disabled and elderly have occurred in the last few years,
forced by the austerity regime of the Control Board with the unfortunate
compliance of the City Council and Mayor. Mayor Tony Williams was the Chief
Financial Officer (“CFO”) of the unelected Control Board. As CFO he recommended
the hurtful budget cuts in the safety net.Our mainstream media, projected this new arrival to DC, with significant
financial backing by individuals and organizations associated with regional
corporate interests (the Federal City Council), into the Mayor’s office."With the city in better financial
shape, Williams said he hopes to begin rebuilding the social services network
for children, seniors and the poor that was devastated by hefty budget cuts in
recent years. 'All of them took a huge cut as we made the policy choices... to
get us out of the financial predicament we faced" (Washington Post 2/9/99). Mayor Tony Williams' proposed
budget for FY 2003 is once again is balanced on the backs of low income and
working class residents who constitute the majority of the District population.
We are still waiting for the rebuilding of the safety net promised three years
ago. Programs such as Tenants, General Public and Emergency Assistance, Chore
Aid for Seniors and Disabled have not been restored. Homeless Services remain
seriously under funded, while homelessness is growing. The expansion of the
number of treatment slots for substance abuse is still far below the estimated
need. Over 50,000 residents remain without any health coverage, while the
Mayor's health insurance program for those under 200% of poverty remains
grossly inadequate and under funded. The TANF benefit with entitlements
included remains below the federal poverty level, impacting at least a third of
our children. Budgeting for these programs is literally a matter of life and
death. We are told that there not enough money to address these needs, in spite
of the multibillion dollar taxable income of wealthy District residents, who
now pay lower local tax rates than low income residents. We are told that we
can’t fund these programs while providing a long overdue increase in the school
budget. The destruction of DC General, our only public hospital, is an assault
on the human rights of our residents, especially our low income and working
class majority.

The Control Board
was created by Congress on the pretext of eliminating a large budget deficit.
But the real agenda of this unelected body has been to lubricate the wheels of
finance capital, by promoting privatization, weakening income security for
workers and the poor, increasing economic inequality and the “misery index”,
accelerating gentrification and economic development for corporate interests,
eroding the remaining democratic rights of District residents, in other words,
neoliberal globalization come home. The District became a laboratory for
Structural Adjustment.

The rich grow richer, the poor (and increasingly the
“middle class”) grow poorer.Instead of
“trickle down” economics, we have witnessed an “artesian well” flow of wealth
to the top. This is demonstrated by IRS statistics for District tax payers,
showing the booming incomes of the wealthy, while low/middle income brackets
stagnate or decline. This restructuring of the economy of the Metro DC area is
the local application of neoliberal policies of the transnational banks and
corporations resulting in growing polarization of rich and poor. Neoliberalism
is the theory that the market should be left to function without burdensome
regulation or social constraints, including the social safety net,
environmental and occupational protection, and labor rights.The World Bank and IMF have led the way in
transforming the global economy following the neoliberal agenda.It is no accident that the World Bank is a
sponsor of the Economic Resurgence plan for the District, that a World Bank
economist Darius Mans with a record of implementing privatization in several
developing countries sat on the Control Board, apparently leaving after being
exposed during A16. With a growing lack of affordable housing for most
residents, the construction of luxury apartments and the Convention Center is
highest on the agenda of real estate interests in the District. If unchallenged
by an effective labor community coalition, "economic resurgence" will
benefit the wealthy while driving out the working class of the District.

With the Control
Board gone, the regional corporate agenda will still be imposed on the District
unless the power of a labor community coalition is asserted. This emerging
coalition forced our City Council to oppose the Mayor’s and the Control Board’s
destruction plan for DC General. The DC Statehood Green Party will continue
this struggle to empower our residents, especially our working class majority.

The Reality

While DC’s life expectancy has declined, contrary to
national trends, income inequality has increased. One half of our children live
below the poverty level, as a result of welfare "reform" and impact
of inflation since the 1970s. Infant mortality for African Americans remains at
twice the national average. While life expectancy has been increasing
nationally in the last 15 years, it has declined in the District. Using the
most recent statistics available, life expectancy for DC men is 10 years below
the national average, for women 5 years. For Black men in DC, the life
expectancy is apparently 58 years or less, for Black women 72. The life
expectancy for Black men in the District is lower than for any nation in this
hemisphere except for Haiti (Doug Struck and Hamil R. Harris, “Death in the
City”, Washington Post 6/29/98; David Brown and Avram Goldstein, "Death
Knocks Sooner for D.C.'s Black Men", Washington Post 12/4/97).The District income gap is greater than any
state, or virtually all the nation's major cities, and is the underlying cause
of the poverty and bad health of so many of our residents (see e.g., James
Lardner, “Deadly Disparities”, Washington Post 8/16/98). DC’s ratio of the top
fifth to bottom fifth of average income of families with children is 27 to 1,
$203,110 to $7,498, compared to the national ratio of 10 to 1. DC’s ratio just
a decade ago was 16. The middle fifth of family income, averaging $36,918, has
not kept up with inflation (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Economic
Policy Institute). The same trends have been highlighted in “D.C. Gap Between
Rich, Poor Widening Census Data Show A City Polarized On Several Scales”, by
D'Vera Cohn and Sarah Cohen, Washington Post, 8/13/01, B01 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1585-2001Aug12.html):
“The dramatic divisions between the District's haves and have-nots widened over
the 1990s, according to new census data that show a growing number of rich and
poor even as the middle class is shrinking.” Instead of “trickle down”
economics, we have witnessed an “artesian well” flow of wealth to the top. This
is also demonstrated by IRS statistics for District tax payers, showing the
booming incomes of the wealthy, while low/middle income brackets stagnate or
decline. At the same time thanks to Congress and the President, we cannot get
our deserved federal payments amounting to at least $1.8 billion per year, and
the tax revenue from the income of non-resident workers, some $500 million per
year. Note that the World Bank and IMF are exempt from paying over $50 million
per year in tax revenue owed to the District.

Human Rights
Violations in the District of Columbia, Political, Economic and Social

In 1996, the Human Rights Committee of the United Nations
issued General Comment 25, which held that the status of the residents of the
District to be a flagrant violation of the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The U.S.,
along with 136 nations ratified this Covenant.The lack of full congressional representation of DC residents and
continued erosion of home rule are direct violations of the Covenant’s Article
25 which guarantees the right of every citizen to participate in national and
local government through elected representatives.It holds that every citizen has the right to “take
part in the conduct of public affairs, directly or through freely chosen
representatives”, to vote and to be elected by “universal and equal suffrage”
and to have access to public service on “general terms of equality”. Only
statehood will give us self-determination comparable to other U.S.
citizens, including permanent legislative and budgetary autonomy as a state, as
well as two Senators representing this majority African American and Latino
community.

The Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, in particular, articles 23, 25 and 26 outline
each person’s right to housing, food, education, health care and a job at a
living wage. For example, Article 25 states:“Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health
and well-being of himself [herself] and his [her] family, including food,
clothing, housing, and medical care and necessary social services...”

The U.S.
government, with the near complete acquiescence of DC government, continues to
stand in clear contempt of the UN
Convention on the Rights of the Child (signed by U.S.
on 2/16/95; the U.S.
along with Somalia
are apparently the only nations in the world which have still not ratified this
Convention!)This Convention asserts
the following:

“The child has a right to the highest standard of
health and medical care attainable. States shall place special emphasis on the
provision of primary and preventive health care, public health education and
the reduction of infant mortality...Every child has a right to a standard of
living adequate for his or her physical, mental, spiritual, moral and social
development. The child has a right to leisure, play and participation in
cultural and artistic activities.”

All of these social and economic rights have been
systematically violated as a result of DC budget cutting, implementation of the
national welfare reform, and the continued denial of political rights of
District residents. For example, Congress continues to forbid the use of local,
public and even some private funds for the District's clean needle-exchange
program to cut short the HIV/AIDS epidemic which now mainly impacts people of
color.

Finally, the continual threat of the reimposition of the
death penalty in DC by federal authorities or Congress is contrary to
internationally recognized standards of human rights. The violations of these
human rights are objectively and profoundly racist since its worst effects are
borne by African Americans, Latinos and other people of color, first of all
children, but the rights of all DC residents are being violated. The systematic
violation of our political, social and economic human rights in the District
should not only be a local and national focus of organizational activity but
also must be made an international source of extreme embarrassment for the U.S.
government. It is high time to make these violations an international issue by
exposing the hypocrisy of the President and the State Department, who preach
human rights to everyone else on the globe, “protected” of course under its
umbrella of military force and economic/political blackmail.

The DC Statehood
Green Party joined by Standup for Democracy have launched a global online
petition to the UN Commission on Human Rights for DC Statehood and Human
Rights. Sign it and spread the news to your friends and relatives!